Echoes of a Summer haze
Long and everlasting days
Sunkissed hair and warming skin
Gently ripples beneath the swim
Delicate rays of dappled sun
Illuminating children run
Grassy scents and floral ember
Etching memories to remember
Daisy chains, as threading varies
Chasing dandelion fairies
Sweeping swathes of green oasis
Hold in place a sweeter stasis
Tranquil pools of sparkling darkness
Emphasised in brutal starkness
Heady days of warmth and laughter
Reminisced forever after
Eternal reeling films enraptured
Of loving memories recaptured
years of elder age,
youth memories and childhood
float up with neat ease!
So nice and sweet to remember
Playing with my younger brother
With mom’s constant reminder
To be a good sibling and sister-
As his older sister, she said
Learn to give way, instead
If his mood turns flaring red
Wait patiently, don’t go to bed.
Hug him and speak softly
Share and show fairness lovingly
Use magic words, act humbly
He’ll definitely follow, learns slowly.
Mom’s teachings were effective
No rivalry, rapport was highly achieved
Siblings’ closeness bloomed, heaved
But he passed away so early, I grieved.
If I disobeyed and remained stubborn
He didn’t enjoy life with me…so forlorn
No strong bonds, fun, travels and so on
No joyful memories with loved ones.
I remember little of my childhood.
Or perhaps I remember too much, but all of it in fragments.
Marabá Paulista would wake up before God lit the sun.
First came the smell of packed lunches being prepared—mingling scents
that slipped uninvited through the cracks in the houses' weathered wood.
Then, the diesel fumes and the red dust.
Old trucks, like monsters, rumbled through the streets,
swallowing up the adults and vanishing down the dirt road.
During the day, the town belonged to the children and the elderly.
We thought that was freedom.
At dusk, the trucks returned,
spitting out bodies that were barely alive;
my parents would arrive—worn out, stooped, and weary.
As a boy, I didn't yet know
how to put a name to it.
Today I know:
the trucks didn't just carry workers.
They carried away pieces of childhood.
you lived next door
years later
in the airport of my connecting flight
you said
"I'd always been piss and vinegar"
once, in kindergarten,
we walked to school together
we had something for show and tell
you wore your pain on the outside
you were always friendly to me
I wore my pain on the inside,
both of us, black sheep
I never acknowledged you
and we never connected
as adults, we both continued to suffer
but never connected
piss and vinegar - maybe
but, to me
you were sugar and spice
sunshine
on a long cloudy day
2/Memory
The summer of 1961 stays with me in small, steady ways. Bare feet on hot Texas sidewalks, jump-rope songs drifting between houses, mothers calling from screen doors—all of it part of the quiet world I grew up with. The box fan's low hum, the sharp crack of ice trays, the porch light warming the dusk—ordinary things that felt like the neighborhood holding itself together.
Rock ’n’ roll floated out of transistor radios, bicycles waited in the yard as if they knew we’d be back, and fireflies stitched their brief gold through the evening. I didn’t realize then how memory was already gathering these moments, saving them without asking. I only knew the slow stillness of night settling in and something larger than childhood holding me close.
dusk in my bones~
old summers rise like prayer,
soft and unbidden
Echoing places
Now left as.
Whilst that in the mind
Rings 'alas'.
childhood flickers rise
like small fireflies
caught in the mind’s branches~
quick glints of once-was,
the kind that vanish
even as they shine:
a swing’s slow shadow,
bicycles humming the length of summer,
chalk-bright hopscotch squares
tilted on warm pavement,
the blue hush of a swimming pool
holding our breath and our shadows,
hide-n-seek dissolving into laughter
behind hedges and half-forgotten corners~
all of it quivering
at the edge of recall,
yet steady enough
to warm the present.
when I was but a little girl we had a hammock
in our backyard between the trees
it was lovely to crawl in and let the wind caress me
back and forth
I would gather my doll close to my heart
and quietly spend hours swaying, dreaming
oh, so exquisite the wind- like a soft breath
a soft murmur in the trees
I loved the whooshing, hissing, and whispering
and the delicate sound of birds tweeting
I felt tranquility, serenity and calmness
and I could dream of beautiful places and things
as I lay floating in the wind
smelling the aroma of mothers flower garden
oh, the wind nudges me from my dream
with a pleasant poetic breeze
like a ripple on the water
and peace has wrapped me in her arms
I still recall how I once felt,
a young boy, as I knelt.
There were pigs, cows, and chickens.
I laughed like the dickens
before a board of felt.
HOME IN THE WOODS
Through the woods I roam and it's home I see one good breath and my soul is released when we climbed and jumped ran and had fun and in my heart I was once again young but as I'm too old to play in the woods as I stood at the edge of my childhood.
The countless leaves in the trees how they dance so wild and free and frivolouly so unaware how rare were the days catching fire flies neath starry skies so unprepared for the chaotic way reality would play as everyone betrayed their yesterday but the leaves in the trees still dance for me.
The stallwort trees fending the breeze sway every which way chasing their leaves as their towering might empowers and inspires me to stand up to the land razing lumber man proud and unbowed saving my timberlands from which my strength is endowed my oldest friend my wonder kin.
The underbrush moist and lush a plethora of smells making nostrils swell and gives my memory a rush reminding me of the times when living and giving were intertwined like the vines and the leaves fallen from the trees in the thicket with the crickets, and the birds in the trees and frogs in the creek, calling me home.
snow loudly crunched
on my bittersweet walk
through yesteryear made memories
of my brother and me
in snowball wars
My heart roams this wild landscape
in search of a vanished childhood.
I had last seen her walking along this
sandy loam path that cuts between
two pines. There she walked farther
up to the clearing now overgrown
with poison oak. Thistle had not
snagged her gauzy skirt in those
days of childhood wonder. Deer
tracks were recognizable, and scrub
jay feathers were to be found and
tucked into skirt pockets. But now,
even as smoke clouds the horizon,
I find only the rust of pine cones,
a half-eaten bird, and a snake that
choked and died on another
snake's head.
fall forest deer path
I follow heart-shaped deer tracks
still seeking her soul
Remains, though tedious walked
Of one Time-beat, droopy
For what of its sound was thrown up
A neighbourhood, joy-free.
Morning light drifts soft and meek
through cottonwoods that lean and speak,
their shadows brushing childhood’s cheek
down by old Duck Creek.
Barefoot summers, warm and slow,
grass stains where our young dreams would grow,
the world felt small enough to know
down by old Duck Creek.
Cicadas hummed their dusty tune,
a cloudless Texas sky in June,
and time moved gentle as the moon
down by old Duck Creek.
Now memory walks where I once ran,
a grown heart holding what it can,
still hearing God in wind and sand
down by old Duck Creek.
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